Taking preventive steps is the best way to protect your property from pests. Remove sources of food, water and shelter by cleaning frequently and keeping items like trash cans closed.
Look for gnaw marks on your walls, floor and cardboard boxes. Other signs of a pest infestation include droppings, soiled upholstery or odor. Contact Olathe Pest Control now!
As the first step in a pest control program, correctly identifying the pest is vital. This enables the manager to determine a strategy for managing that pest. Accurate identification also helps managers to determine the effectiveness of cultural practices, tools and pesticides.
In order to identify a pest, the manager must have a clear understanding of the life cycle of that pest as well as the environmental and harborage conditions it prefers. This information enables the pest management specialist to discover and act upon weaknesses that might be used to control the pest.
Once the pest is identified, the goal is to reduce it to an acceptable level in order to protect people, property and natural resources. Usually, this is accomplished with a combination of suppression and prevention.
Often times, a pest infestation is difficult to diagnose and manage. A good way to start is to scout fields and accurately identify the pest, whether it be an insect, plant disease, or vertebrate animal. When scouting, look for damage indicators (such as leaves chewed or discolored) and reproductive habits.
If the identification of the pest is not straightforward, consult with a colleague, your commodity or industry organization, your Cooperative Extension agent, or a State land grant university. If the problem is widespread, submitting a sample to an APHIS laboratory may be necessary. Make sure that a complete and high quality sample is submitted to the lab; the more detail in the submission, the more accurate the identification can be. An excellent resource for assisting in the identification of a pest is the APHIS National Identification Services, which consists of specialists in the fields of botany, entomology, and malacology.
Pesticides
Pesticides are chemicals used to prevent, destroy or control pests (disease-carrying organisms such as mosquitoes and ticks, unwanted species of plants or animals, and the diseases they carry). The primary advantage of using pesticides is that they can save crops. They also eliminate disease vectors, and they can reduce nuisance organisms such as weeds or rodents. In addition, pesticides can be administered to livestock for disease prevention and growth promotion.
Pesticide safety is important because exposure to these chemicals can have a range of health impacts. The risks vary from short-term impacts such as headaches and nausea to chronic impacts such as cancer and reproductive harm. Pesticides can be absorbed through the skin, inhaled or ingested. They can also enter the water supply and be carried by runoff into lakes, rivers and streams. In the environment, pesticides may be broken down by microbes into harmless compounds or leached into groundwater supplies. They can also drift off-target and impact non-target organisms.
The type of pesticide and the manner in which it is applied affects how quickly a person can become exposed to it. The form of the pesticide (solid, liquid or gas) affects how easily it can be absorbed through the skin. It is important to follow label instructions for proper application and safety precautions.
It is also advisable to wear a long-sleeved shirt, long pants and gloves whenever possible when handling any pesticide. If a spray is being used, it is especially important to ensure that the clothing is thoroughly washed afterward. It is also important to remove pets, toys and food from a treated area before applying a pesticide. Also, if a granular product is being applied, it is important to follow the instructions regarding how quickly the granules need to be watered in afterward.
Exclusion
The goal of pest exclusion is to seal off points of entry that prevent pests from accessing a structure. This is done with a variety of materials including caulk, foam and silicone. It’s important that the right products are used to ensure the job is completed correctly and effectively. Ideally, the work is performed by a skilled and experienced technician.
Pests are attracted to the warmth and comfort of homes and businesses, making them ideal places for breeding and nesting. Their presence can damage insulation, gnaw structural elements and cause health hazards. Exclusion works to keep pests out by blocking off access to food, water and shelter. This pro-active approach is more environmentally responsible than haphazardly spraying powerful chemicals to eradicate a problem after it develops.
In addition to the benefits of eliminating the need for chemical pesticides, there are a number of other advantages that come with using exclusion techniques. They include:
As a commercial pest control company, it is important to offer exclusion services. It is a service that sets you apart from your competition and allows you to provide a more comprehensive pest management plan for your customers. It can also help you to build customer loyalty and trust because it’s more proactive than reactive. In a time when customers have high expectations, it’s an opportunity to show that your business can deliver. However, the implementation of pest exclusion does require some additional skills and training that may not be available to every pest control company. Proper exclusion requires ladders, products that are not commonly found in the pest control industry and tools that most people may not have at home or work.
Baits
Baits provide effective control of pests that are difficult to target with sprays, dusts and foams. Liquid, gel and granular baits work in tandem to eliminate insect pests by depriving them of their food sources. Because of this, they are far more targeted and effective than sprays and dusts. Baits also provide a great option for chemical sensitive accounts where contamination by spray and dust could be a concern.
Rodent baiting is an excellent supplement to rodent trapping, as it reduces the population of mice and rats living around your home, thereby decreasing pressure on and the chances of four-legged intruders making their way inside. However, it is important to remember that any openings in the home’s exterior, such as soffit vents in disrepair, open crawl space vents, A/C chases and vent stacks, etc., must be sealed and rodent-proofed to prevent new rat entryways.
While rat and mouse baits are effective, they should not be used in areas that are in direct sunlight as internal temperatures can rise enough to melt the blocks of poisoned rodent bait. This is especially true if the bait stations are in open areas such as landscaping or near to structures.
A key consideration with any baiting program is the ability to estimate rodent and cockroach bait consumption accurately. This can be challenging with gel and liquid baits whose water content constantly changes due to evaporation. If this water loss is not accounted for correctly, the estimated bait consumption and palatability of the bait will be greatly over or understated. For this reason, a pest control professional should use bait stations that have been designed to limit water loss and offer enhanced tamper protection.
Traps
Traps are a very important tool in pest control. They are primarily used for monitoring and mass trapping, but can also be used to directly apply treatments. The main advantage of traps is that they are able to capture insects without disturbing them. They are usually based on visual (colour, shape and light) and/or chemical attractants, with the trap itself having either a physical barrier to entry or an active mechanism that immobilises pests once they reach it.
Generally, traps are designed to capture the species that are causing damage to a crop. They can be very diverse in shape and size and can vary significantly depending on the target pest. For example, thrips traps are largely yellow because they have been shown to be particularly attractive to this pest (Shipp et al., 2000). They also have a grid pattern so that the insects can be easily counted.
In general, traps should be placed as close to the crop as possible. This will minimise the distance of the trap from the field, reducing the risk that it may interfere with the pest behaviour or the action of natural enemies. It will also minimise the exposure of the trap to weather conditions that could impact its performance, such as high wind or excessive sunlight.
Traps are most effective when they are set just before the beginning of the first generation of the pest. This is difficult to achieve manually, however, as the biological cycle and number of generations varies greatly depending on the climate in the specific area. Software such as FuturCrop automates this task and can calculate the exact moment to make trap captures for 179 different pest species across the world.